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Accessible Playgrounds & Inclusive Play Areas

Every community and school should have accessible playgrounds and naturally inclusive play areas. Your neighborhood, parks department or school district may already be planning, building and updating playgrounds so they can be enjoyed by children with physical disabilities, developmental delays or other special needs, alongside their mainstream peers.

What can you do to provide these options for children in your community? Existing school and neighborhood playgrounds can often be adapted so they are safe and accessible for all children, with only a bit more effort and cost than would be spent for regular annual maintenance or improvements.

Playgrounds should also be accessible to parents, teachers, and other adults who use wheelchairs or other mobility aids. It is critical that all parents with disabilities have access to their children's playgrounds, and design features that accommodate individual differences for the maximum amount of fun and playtime interactions. Veterans returning with combat injuries deserve consideration in all public spaces.

Where children of varying ability, age and size have been considered in playground design, most issues related to crawling and climbing by children using wheelchairs for access to the equipment have already been addressed.

Many of the reasonable and quite simple accommodations that have been developed for children with disabilities already benefit and are enjoyed by their mainstream peers. Every child deserves public play areas that are both challenging and fun - and when well planned, the natural integration that results can help us build inclusive communities from the first years of our children's lives.

Emotional access and making spaces psychologically as well as physically welcoming'Don't Stare at Me' is an access need, too
Her dog is not the most interesting thing about her, by far.
http://meloukhia.net/2012/08/dont_stare_at_me_is_an_access_need_too.html